


The World is Waiting for You.

by Em_is_here



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: F/M, Shirbert, Shirbert catch the Spanish flu, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:21:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21599092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_is_here/pseuds/Em_is_here
Summary: Shirbert get the Spanish flu.
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 4
Kudos: 148





	The World is Waiting for You.

Gilbert collapsed onto the sofa when he arrived back home. 

Two more had gone today.

A young woman of twenty five, had gone blue and stopped breathing before noon, leaving a young child in the care of their Aunt and uncle, their father had died a week before.

This latest one had been Diana Barry's eldest son. 

Anne had gone home with her to prepare everything, and to provide a rock for her oldest and dearest friend. 

Anne, wonderful, brilliant, optimistic Anne was finding less and less to be happy about and grateful for recently. 

Neither of them had seen their children in weeks, they had been sent to Marilla once the reports of the outbreak started, to live in isolation until Gilbert and Anne specifically called for them to come back. Their father's profession as a doctor putting him in harm's way, as well as Anne's tendancy to put herself in harm's way to help others.

Noone knew how or when, but Spanish flu ahd come to Avonlea. 

One child had a particularly bad case of influenza in the spring and it had spread, but Avonlea was no stranger to sickness and simply closed all public meeting places until Gilbert himself cleared their opening. Only two people had died in the spring.

This was much, much worse. Meeting places were once again closed but that did little to stop the spread this time and twenty people had died in the last month. For a town of 500, this was becoming desperate. 

Gilbert could feel a headache coming on, so despite the fact that he hadn't eaten and that it was barely six o'clock in the evening, he shuffled to their bedroom and slept fitfully.

Anne walked through her front door tired to the bone and hurting. She had put Diana to bed after an uncharacteristically quiet night. It was almost as if any higher thought in her friend's head had shut down and she had been going through the motions of eating and changing and caring for her children. So Anne set her to bed, looked after her nieces and nephews and sent them to bed too. Now she wanted to cry herself to sleep in her husband's arms mourning the precocious child who had once been John.

But when she came into the house it was deathly still, fire gone cold. But those were Gilbert's shoes and outer clothes so he must be home...

"Gil? Gil are you home?" 

A groan came from their bedroom. 

"Gilbert? Are you in there?"

She pushed open the door and looked down at her husband, groaning in pain on their bed. He was fully clothed and ... She touched his head... Was running a fever. 

Anne pushed down repressed memories of a night similar to this. She just hoped that this illness had as happy an outcome as that one. 

"Gilbert," she whispered, "Gilbert i need you to wake up." He stirred. "We need to get you into bedclothes and then you need to diagnose yourself."

She propped him up and helped him change into a nightshirt. 

"It's flu, isn't it." She had her forehead pressed against his back. He just nodded weakly. 

"Alright. I'm going to get a bowl of cold water and cloths. We're going to have to break that fever. You just stay here, and try to sleep."

She was almost out of the door when he spoke up. 

"No, you'll catch it too.."

She turned back to him, stroking his hair off his forehead. "My love, if you have it, we both know that me leaving now will not change whether or not i have it yet. I just pity anyone else who came near either of us in the past few days. Now. I'm going to get some water and cloths. Sleep my love, I'll be back." 

The next few days were awful. Anne had quickly put up the agreed warning signs that the house was infected - closing all the curtains and tying flags of red cloth to the gates and doors of their home. 

By the time she returned upstairs with cold water, Gilbert was already in the middle of a fever dream that she woke him from. So there she sat, changing the cloth every ten minutes or so. Until he started coughing. Hard. Then she sat him up and went to boil some water to try and clear his airpipes of anything blocking his breathing. And on and on it went throughout the next few days.

Gilbert woke up in his bed, nightshirt drenched with sweat, his wife sitting in a chair to his side with their hands intertwined and her head upon the bed. He assumed his fever must have broken at some point, as he felt better. Though how long he had been sick he could not say. 

He looked over at his Anne again. There were horrible bags under her eyes, her hair having reverted back to the two plaits he had first seen her in that fateful day. And she was sweating. 

No, no, no, no. Not Anne too. Not his Anne with an E. 

"Anne sweetheart? Anne you need to wake up." She lifted her head and smiled weakly.

"You look better." He eyes slipped closed again. "That's good."

"You've made yourself sick looking after me, Anne. You're burning."

"No, no. I'll be fine. Do you want anything? Water or some food?"

"What i want is for you to get changed and get into this bed with me and actually rest for what i assume is the first time in days."

She grumbled, but did as she was told, all the while insisting that she wasn't sick. Gilbert didn't believe that for a minute.

Later that afternoon, when he felt strong enough to stand, he slid from her grip to get the both of them some food. 

Anne woke up with a worse fever and a missing husband. So naturally she got out of bed and tried to go looking for him, managing to fall down the stairs when she heard him in the kitchen. 

He rushed to her as fast as he could and tried to get her to stand but she could barely manage two steps and he certainly wasn't strong enough to carry her back to the bed upstairs.

"Well, Annie. It looks like we're stating down here for a bit." Together they hobbled to the sofa and he gave her some hot, thin broth that made her feel every so slightly better. And so they repeated the process in each other's roles. 

A week later, Gilbert was back to full strength and had carried a still weak Anne back upstairs as soon as he was able. She had quite the nasty collection of bruises and gashes from her fall one of which was bad enough to need stitches which he had done with his personal medical kit. 

"One advantage of having the best doctor on Prince Edward Island for a husband, is free treatment." She had tried to joke while he did it. He smiled but sent her a look that shut her up. 

"My dear, if you weren't married to a doctor, your bills would be so high that you wouldn't be able to live for the debt." 

Her fever had broken, but the coughing hadn't gone away. She was even coughing up blood occasionally. Gilbert tried to do everything he could but nothing was working.

One late night, after she fell asleep, he cried as silently as he could into her hair. She was dying, here in their bed and there was nothing he could do about it. 

"Please. Please let her live. She can't die. Not here, not now. Our children need her, Marilla needs her. I need her." 

When Anne woke up, she felt as though she was on deaths door. Her wonderful, caring husband was lying, just as she had been the night his fever broke. 

Her hand was up, poised to knock on the door.

"Anne" he spoke as he slept, soft and reverant and lovely.

And her hand came down. 

She thought of her children. Scared that they would never see their parents again. Their eldest was barely eight, their youngest weaned only two months ago. She would never know her mother. 

She stepped back from the door.

She would not subject her children to what she had grown up with. Not knowing their parents, or whether they truly loved them. 

She turned around. 

Diana, her bosom friend, needed her now more than ever before, even if it was purely to keep her children alive until she recovered from her grief. Or even to kick her out of her grief if it went on too long. 

She took another step. It was difficult and felt as though she was stepping through honey.

Marilla, her darling Marilla who saved her from a life of service and beatings and gave her a family. Marilla who had lost both of her brothers now and only had Anne and her grandchildren left.

Another step away from death's door. She could see the door that led to her bedroom now, almost within touching distance.

She thought of Gilbert who had nursed her for a week, even though he was still recovering from his own illness. Her Gilbert who loved her for her mind and her oddness and her sharp tounge as well as ever freckle on her face and her slowly darkening hair that still reminded him of that night when they were sixteen after they had taken the Queen's entrance exam. He had once told her that she had looked every inch the Faerie queen she had once pretended she was that night. He had been rewarded for that with a long kiss.

Her hand was on the doorknob now. She just had to...

The world was waiting for her on the other side of this door. And she for one, wanted to see some more of her story. 

And she was back in her own body, breathing easier. 

She looked down at her husband and squeezed his hand. 

"Gilbertt?" 

"Hmmmm?" 

"Come on into the bed now, darling. That position will hurt your neck." 

He slid into the bed and held her close. Then promptly fell asleep again. 

"I love you Gilbert Blythe. I always have, i always will."

**Author's Note:**

> This came about because i was watching a video series on the Spanish flu on YouTube (Extra Credits is incredible and you should go watch all their stuff) and then i realised that our favourite pair of Prince Edward Islanders would have been middle aged at the time and one of them would have been a doctor.
> 
> And then this appeared. 
> 
> Please note that i have never suffered from a life threatening illness. What i do know is that sometimes the difference between life and death is the fight a person is willing to give to stay alive.


End file.
